Circular 19/2025/TT-BGDĐT has just been issued, stipulating regulations on rewarding and disciplining students. The most controversial point is the total elimination of suspension and forced expulsion for students who commit serious violations. In other words, even if a student exhibits violent behavior or threatens the lives of teachers or classmates, the school is not permitted to apply measures to remove that student from the class. At first glance, this sounds very humane, but in reality, this instruction puts both teachers and students in a dangerous position.
I would like to ask: Who will protect the future of the remaining tens or hundreds of students?
1. School Safety is the Supreme Principle
A classroom is an educational space, not a laboratory to experiment with mercy. When a student exhibits violent behavior that threatens teachers and classmates, forcing the school to keep that student in the class is equivalent to sowing constant fear due to a lack of safety. Tens or hundreds of remaining students will have to live in anxiety.
According to The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative by the U.S. Secret Service & Department of Education (2004), school attacks do not happen spontaneously; perpetrators usually display warning signs beforehand, and the majority had shared their intentions with others prior to taking action.
The threat assessment model in schools, developed by the University of Virginia under the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) and recommended in reports by the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Education, is a multidisciplinary process (threat assessment team) aimed at early detection – assessing the threat level – and appropriate intervention, including temporarily removing dangerous students from class, in order to both ensure safety for the school community and support the individual at risk.
Therefore, according to studies, in reality, schools that lack mechanisms for “emergency removal” and “threat assessment” are often bewildered, leading to genuine unsafety.
The implementation of multidisciplinary risk assessment has helped significantly reduce cases of long-term suspension and student arrests, while simultaneously creating a safer learning environment. This is also the most effective method to prevent and forestall serious violent incidents in schools.
This is the “tool” that Circular 19 has inadvertently stripped away.
2. The Rights of the Majority Cannot Be Sacrificed for an Individual Exception
Circular 19 places the rights of an individual exceptional student above those of tens or hundreds of other students. Have the drafters ever had their own children sitting in a class, being bullied every day, psychologically terrorized, facing the potential of being stabbed, and constantly living in fear? If not, making decisions on paper is far too easy, while the price to pay is the long-term trauma of many other innocent children.
The law always sets forth the principle of balancing rights. When a behavior crosses the threshold of threatening physical safety, the majority’s right to safety must take priority. The only way to achieve balance is to grant schools the right to perform emergency removals or forced expulsions when no other solutions remain.
3. The Illusion of “Express Rehabilitation”
Proponents of the above changes in Circular 19 probably assume that “exceptional students can change quickly if educated with love, tolerance, and appropriate supportive interventions.” This is an assumption full of illusion and naivety, lacking practical reality.
Research on behavioral interventions for aggressive actions at school shows that the effectiveness of change is only at a small to medium level, and more importantly, there is no immediate change. Serious programs usually last for many months, or even years, and require continuous coordination between the family and psychological experts.
During that time, must tens and even hundreds or thousands of other students trade off their safety for prolonged trauma? Is this fair?
4. Families Do Not Always Partner with the School
Another assumption supporting this point in Circular 19 is that families will actively cooperate with the school to change the student. But in reality in Vietnam, not a few parents view the school as a “daycare center,” completely entrusting everything to the teachers. They fail to cooperate with the school entirely.
Studies show that: a lack of parental cooperation significantly reduces the effectiveness of interventions aimed at changing a child’s behavior.
So if families refuse to cooperate, why do we place the burden of rehabilitation onto the shoulders of the school, and then turn the entire school, the entire class, and tens or hundreds of other students into “victims” of the family’s lack of responsibility? Do we have enough resources for this?
5. Don’t Be Naive About the Severity of Violations
There is another dangerous misconception: that because students are still young, they cannot commit serious acts, so there is no need to isolate them. But in reality, adolescents are fully capable of bringing weapons to school, using drugs, committing sexual abuse, or even committing homicide.
In Vietnam, the Penal Code stipulates that: from the age of full 14, students must bear criminal responsibility for very serious or particularly serious crimes; from the age 16, they bear responsibility for most offenses. We cannot continue using the excuse of “under 18, still immature” as a cover-up. Children today are far smarter and possess much better awareness than many previous generations.
With Circular 19, we are opening a Pandora’s box: exceptional students, knowing they “cannot be expelled,” will increasingly abuse this, challenge discipline, and exert negative, even harmful impacts on teachers and friends.
6. Criminalizing Student Violations
When Circular 19 removes the form of forced expulsion, schools are virtually stripped of their “final weapon of protection.” Suppose a student carries a weapon to threaten classmates and teachers or commits serious illegal acts; if the school no longer has the right to emergency removal, the only remaining solution is… to call the police and… prosecute criminally.
Thus, what is termed “humane” inadvertently destroys the future of students even further: instead of facing a punishment within the school scope, the violating student must face criminal law.
Meanwhile, allowing “emergency removal + threat assessment” helps significantly reduce student arrests. Precisely because it lacks this mechanism, Circular 19 pushes schools into a corner, and it may backfire.
7. Lessons from the “Student Attacking Teacher” Incident
The recent incident where a student brought sharp objects and, when they were confiscated, attacked the teacher made my blood run cold. Just thinking about how in the future many students could arrogantly bring such lethal weapons to school without being thoroughly dealt with makes us shudder.
But what concerns me even more is the handling approach: local authorities “sought guidance” from the Department of Education and Training and higher authorities. This proves that the authorities act very slowly and perhaps genuinely do not know what to do; for such a serious matter, spending several days to “seek guidance.” As for the Department and agencies, they could only answer that this is a very serious matter. Once it is very serious, then what?
Meanwhile, the urgent task of protecting the teacher and the remaining students seems to be noticed by no one and answered by no one.
8. Restore Decision-Making Authority to Principals
Schools must have the right to decide on suspending or forcibly expelling students upon serious violations. The Ministry of Education and Training cannot “prohibit” on behalf of those who directly manage education. Doing so is no different from treating educational managers like children who do not know what is best to do.
Have faith that managers are decent enough and experienced enough not to abuse the harshest form of discipline. Do not strip away the final right of protection from schools and teachers. A policy in the name of “saving one child” that automatically pushes tens or hundreds of other children into a danger zone cannot be called humane.
It is precisely this removal of the right to suspend and forcibly expel that is the very way to make schools unsafe, and is the action that negatively impacts the future of tens or hundreds of other innocent students.
Nguyen Quoc Toan
Appendix: International Scientific Studies and Reports
- U.S. Secret Service & U.S. Department of Education
Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates (2002)
- U.S. Secret Service
Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence (2019)
- U.S. Secret Service & Department of Education
The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States (2004)
- University of Virginia
Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG)
- Learning Policy Institute
Pushed Out: Trends and Disparities in Out-of-School Suspension (2018)
- Learning Policy Institute
Improving Student Outcomes Through Restorative Practices (2019)
- Learning Policy Institute
Fostering Belonging, Transforming Schools: The Impact of Restorative Practices Report (2020)
